


Insolvency

by extryn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Breathplay, Choking, Dubious Consent, F/M, Het and Slash, Office Sex, The Doctor Is Getting Therapy (Finally), The Master Caused The Subprime Mortgage Crisis, Time War Angst (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-19 06:42:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22206820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: 'No,' he whispers, slipping his fingers out of her mouth, sliding them down her jaw, drawing the thick strings of saliva to her collarbone. 'You didn't kill me. You,' he tugs at her collar, sliding his wet fingers underneath her skivvy, 'threw me to the wolves.'
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 165





	Insolvency

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK THIS, FUCK EVERYTHING, I'M NOT COPING, AND WHY'S SACHA DHAWAN SO HOT

She has to be very careful when she chooses the coordinates. Their personal timelines are so densely knotted within the twentieth century that it may rip, if she were to pull them any tighter.

She doesn't pick the fifties, their satisfaction. Finding him at the mercy of the human hatred he commended, the justice he ridiculed. The ugly part of her that doesn't regret what she did. The uglier part still, that has catalogued all the ways she could have ended this differently and all the things she could have sacrificed to get them.

It's that second heart of hers tempting her with the seventies, the eighties. The noughties. But, hand on the lever, she realises she’s already giving that voice more airtime than it deserves.

She's not used to it being so subdued, Times Square. Actually, she'd been looking forward to it, the hustling and bustling, all that life and activity. Just what she needs, really, a bit of perspective. A bit of reminding. A bit of deep-dish pizza.

Ah, the Doctor realises. She's nervous. And so's the rest of New York.

It's March, 2002, and she's walking up Seventh Avenue. She's tried grinning at a few people, and their quiet head-down hurrying is sapping the optimism right out of her. All the cops on the corners. She's glad Yaz isn't here to see this, the fear and hatred. She should be glad, being the one to send her home, and all that.

They'd be upset with her. Maybe. Or maybe they'd understand. That'd be even worse.

It's not hard to find him, nor had she expected it to be. They're both creatures of habit, stuck in their ways, and he likes creating chaos as much as she likes chasing it.

Nice building. Big skyscraper, a timid sheen on the glass, spring sun barely emerging from the clouds. Oh, and—

'Revolving doors!' she exclaims, leaping through a minor plague of pigeons. 'I love a good revolving door!' And, on reflection: 'Very difficult to slam.'

She shuffles into one of its divisions – pizza-shaped, she’d _love_ that slice of pizza – alongside a very boring man in a very boring suit. 'Hi,' she offers, stumbling against the glacial pace of the door in front of her. 'I'm the Doctor—'

The door jerks to a halt. Quite a few faces glare at her.

'Ah,' she says, rather sheepishly. 'Sorry bout that.'

She _always_ loves this bit. Can't help fumbling with her psychic paper, excitement and terror mixing like paint in her chest, before she flips it at the nice lady at the desk. Only lady she's seen, actually. 'The Doctor,' she continues, like they've already had this conversation.

That wide-eyed flare of recognition just makes the Doctor grin harder, and the nice lady at the desk taps a button on the switchboard. 'Doctor Smith here to see you, Director Matshreet, I'll send her right up.'

She salutes—do they salute, businesspeople? Maybe they're the handshake sort. _Ooh_ , that look. Definitely the handshake. Oops.

He's got a nice little gold plaque, tastefully emblazoned on an oversized walnut door, light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Executive office. Director, actually. Very swish. Not that she needs the signage. This close, she can smell him, can taste him at the periphery of her mind. Acid, burning sharp and sweet at once. Bit too much like a good drink. He's fast, as fast as she is, and in this body he might even be faster than her. The element of surprise won't last long enough for her to hesitate, now.

She sweeps the door open mid-stride. Bit of an anticlimax. Him, just sitting there, clean-shaven and both palms braced against his desk. Like nothing's happened. Like’s she’s tasting cigar smoke instead of ash.

' _Matshreet_ , eh?' the Doctor volleys. 'Running out of ideas? Or,' she says, pulling up a chair. 'Maybe you wanted me to find you.'

He's fidgeting. Racing, calculating, she can feel it jumping off his mind, see the fractious energy sparking off him. He inhales, licks his lips, exhales again.

'I have been waiting,' he begins, breath thick with it, ' _so_ long, to see you.'

Her voice goes tight. 'I haven't.'

He opens his mouth, caught mid-enunciation, teeth bared. 'I could teach you a lot about patience. Looks like,' he stalls, tasting, licking the edge of her thoughts, 'you might need it.'

She jerks into action, snatches a file off his desk, flicks through it hard enough the pages slip out the cover to the floor. 'Investment banker? That's a new low. Or, I s'pose it isn't, really, is it? Nice step up from Nazi.'

His eyes flash, hot and dangerous. His tongue flicks towards her, but she's a quick learner, and she's not going to give him an opening.

'Yeah,' she says, the momentum building pace, urging the words into her mouth, 'That's right. I left you.'

'Did you?' he says, careless as anything.

'This one of your grand plans, then?' She lurches to her feet, unbidden, needs to pace, to think, to keep him on the back foot. 'Biding your time? You getting bored, Master?'

He smirks, fond, knowing. Doesn't deign to look at her, but she can hear the pad of his thumb twitching on the top of his pen, strangled in his fist. 'I'm sorry – excuse me, bit of memory loss, what with the,' he sniffs, gesturing around, 'cabin fever, and all that – but weren't you the one who came to visit _me_?'

She's managed to pace around behind him, glaring into the back of his head, the bare expanse of neck. The click of the retractable pen. In-out-in-out. In-out-in-out.

'Seemed like you had something important to tell me,' she aims over his back. 'Thought it'd be rude to text. Only got one-sixty characters,' she takes a breath, 'Oh, and you'd sprain your thumbs doing the multi-tap.'

The Master hums. She thinks he's considering it. It's the stillness of his fingers, the silence, the unclenching of his fist. Her hearts race near-audibly in the quiet, surging with possibility, aching to hear the thoughts she doesn't dare touch—then she jerks back as he explodes. Volcanic roar, the pen hurled across the room. A hiss of breath as he draws himself back together. He’s still got his back turned to her.

'Come closer, love.'

'Why should I?' the Doctor says, quiet and warning.

He takes another of those breathy, indecisive inhales. 'Come closer, and I'll tell you.'

She could run, she knows. Turn tail, leave him to stew, let him give himself away in time. But she has to know.

Too long of a silence passes, and the Master twists in his chair. He's breathing too fast, grimacing, hungry, fury and need warring in the spin of his electrons. His face shatters into rage, then curls itself back up to grin a broad wolf's smile. So volatile, she can hardly keep up.

' _Now_ , Doctor,' he says, with such effort she knows he's mere moments away from erupting. He's not in control.

And she has to know why.

The Doctor circles back towards him. Wary, readying herself to dodge the second she's sprung his trap. She's arm's reach away from him, and she has to make herself take a step closer still.

He watches her, eyes flicking back between her body and her face, that constant recalculation, unpredictable, but she knows even the smartest algorithm can't generate a truly random number. Know the formula, know the seed, predict the cards. So she kneels.

His face nearly crumples. He's in agony.

She leans in closer, she can smell his shoulder, the wool and the washing powder and the _skin_ underneath, too real. The words are on her tongue, and she almost loses her nerve, the freshly renewed grief threatening to overpower her.

Almost. She arches her neck up to whisper, slow and thick and dark. 'Did you feel like God?'

The hand around her throat, this time, is not just threatening. The grip is so crushing it's cut her blood supply right off at the carotid, her vision already sparking, balance failing. She's on the floor, sounds a distant muffle, world dark. Another hand smothers her mouth and pinches off her nose.

She fades back in to the weight of his body braced on top of hers, knees pinning her at her sides, his breath hot and wet and too fast over her face. Dazed, the Doctor scrapes in a breath, coughs as it scours the inside her throat. The Master's fingers trace her neck, the ghosts of the bruises he left just days ago.

'You're afraid,' she says, simply.

The Master's fingers pause, holding her jaw, forcing her to look at him. He examines her. The moment stretches until she stops staring at that point over his shoulder, and finds herself seeking his eyes. They're wet, fat with tears.

'Why aren't you?' he says. His fingertips drift. They find her lower lip, drawing it down. His thumb catches the underside, pinches, pulls. He's appraising her teeth.

'Because I know,' she says. Tries to say. The second her mouth forms the word around his fingers, clasping them with her lips, he laughs and shoves them to the back of her throat. She gags, instantly, her body convulsing up around him and he pushes down harder, pinning her to the floor by her mouth.

The Master keeps her there, fighting her own body, in quiet observance. 'I should kill you,' he sobs, joy and relief. She tries to bat him away, to say the words that will make sense of this, of him, and gets nowhere but a hand around her wrist, clamped down over her head. He's bigger than her. Heavier. It hasn't been this way before.

'No,' he whispers, slipping his fingers out of her mouth, sliding them down her jaw, drawing the thick strings of saliva to her collarbone. 'You didn't kill me. You,' he tugs at her collar, sliding his wet fingers underneath her skivvy, 'threw me to the wolves.' He laughs, only a couple of hitches before he tears his fingers through both layers, grabs the edges and rips her top straight down the middle.

Bare, he presses his forehead to the centre of her chest, still laughing. ' _I'm_ the wolves, Doctor.' He sits back, weight painful over her hips, eyes flitting anxiously from her body to her face and back again.

She struggles, feeling her face tighten with the strain, but he's got her helpless. He'll wear himself out. Probably. Hopefully. He's as likely to hurt himself as he is to hurt her. She knows outside of the schemes, the stakes, the fighting, the only thing he's got left to break is himself.

He's grabbing at her breast, trying to get a reaction, and she doesn't think he knows whose he's looking for.

'Whatever's happened,' she says— _gasps_ , as he grabs a handful and twists savagely, 'You need my help.'

He freezes. She doesn't dare to breathe, waiting for the kaleidoscope of reactions to shift through his face, too fast to catch. His hand moves before his face does, reaching down to her waist. 'That,' he says, snapping off her suspenders, carefully now, lovingly. 'That's why you've come, is it?'

The Doctor considers lying. Maybe it'd work, this time, maybe she'd find the magic words to make him understand that _too late_ is an asymptote she's been trying to throw herself at for centuries, and she’s never quite touched, but she is _so_ close now—but she's tried that. Lying. It's only ever pushed them both closer to that edge.

He's toying with her waistband, sweaty, shaking fingers fluttering over the downy skin of her abdomen. So soft, this time, too soft. She cups his face, a little too firm to be tender. 'No.'

He turns to her palm and kisses it, a smile growing under her hand. 'Too bad, then.'

Immediately, he slips his fingers into her pants, and the sensation jolts through her like a live wire. The perfect cold-warmth of his hand over her, that palm weighing deep inside her where an ache bursts into life as if it had been waiting for him to ignite it. She tilts her hips away from it, the unknown familiarity too much, the arousal too unwanted. She’s crushed on both sides, the plush carpet and firm concrete beneath her, the heel of his hand, grinding, pressing. She’s crying out as if it hurts, and it does, in its own way.

Her trousers are gone before she realises anything but the sudden bareness of her legs, her chest, the Master still fully clothed. But he’s less fearsome, like this. He’s focussed, now, on her body. Certain in it. He groans a little as he runs his hand across her breast, face laid beside it, breath slow and stuttering over her breastbone. She feels awkward, adrift. He knows her skin better than she’s had the chance to, herself.

‘Master,’ she admits, quiet. 

His body falters, hard and wooden until the tension barks out of him in laughter, grating its high-pitched wheeze into her ear. His voice is near-breaking when he slides his fingers between her legs. ‘Say it.’

She bites through her moan, the strangled-scream wail of it so loud to her own ears, grabbing hard on his shoulder as if to urge him closer as she tries to push him away. She can’t, her _body_ can’t, and she fights it, the shock of pleasure that pierces through her harder and brighter than ever before.

‘Go on,’ he says, sweetly now, rocking his hand against her as he slips his finger into the furrow beside her clit. He threads his hand in her hair. She’s shoving him back as he arches his neck and brings his lips down to hers.

She can feel it—his mind, seeping through their mouths, laying its tendrils into her—and she gasps it, ‘Master!’

His eyes pinpoint her. The stunned silence, the sensation that she’s slapped him instead of giving him what he wanted. He’s off her in the same moment, sitting back on his heels, brows creased. The Doctor pushes herself up onto her elbows. Her undershirt and tee are trailing off her arms, trousers around her knees, body vulnerable and pale. She reaches for those first.

‘No,’ he says, pushing her arm away. ‘No.’

He’s staring—he’s not staring at her. He’s staring at her cunt.

‘Alright,’ she says, throat dry, ‘You’ve had your fun.’

‘Have I?’ he murmurs, and spreads her with his thumbs. The fear hits first. It doesn’t stop it from feeling so, so good. The cool air, touching her where it shouldn’t. She isn’t fond of it.

He regards her with the awe of a scientist as he traces a finger between her labia, and—impossibly slick, she hadn’t even noticed—he draws it over her clit, firm circles, and then down. _Inside_ her. She wants to jerk away. Her hips snap further onto his finger instead. He presses down to the knuckle, the border of his hand a heavy pressure to punctuate the new, sickeningly good sensation of him inside her. Her body _wants_ this. So badly she no longer knows if _she_ does.

His finger suddenly withdraws. She finds herself looking at him, oddly hurt by the emptiness. That light, teasing touch is back, curling through the wetness that’s—that’s pulling from her in thick, glistening strings, she _cringes_ —and he reaches behind her, between her buttocks, probing at her arse.

‘What,’ she tries to frown at him, but he’s lost interest in her face, ‘Why are—’

He looks up, and catches her face for the second it takes him to force his finger inside her, the shock, the hiss of pain on display. The Master raises an eyebrow, baring those bright teeth of his. ‘Because you _like_ this.’

It feels nothing like that brief, gutturally satisfying moment of his finger in her cunt. It hurts, stretches her uncomfortably, feels intrusive and wrong. Like it always has. It feels like him.

‘It won’t work,’ she gasps, something halfway between a cry and a growl escaping between her teeth as he forces another finger in, too dry, ‘Killing people, the plots, the— _ah_!’ and he twists them out again, so roughly she’s sure she’ll tear.

His mouth waters, he shucks his suit jacket, undoes his trousers. Her mind races at the shape of his cock, hard and full, how _good_ he’d feel, how that ache forms so deep inside her, now, she’s not sure anything else will reach it, how she needs to be touched from within. 

He smiles at her, sad and fond, as he rubs the head of his cock through her cunt and nudges it over her clit. That bright point of pleasure jolts into her core, adding to the ache, tugging at it like a cock and making it grow. She needs him—needs to _think_ —he fucks between her thighs, labia, wet and slick and not where she _wants_.

‘I think,’ he says, and he’s groaning, panting with each breath, ‘I think it works so,’ pressing his cock down harder now, nearly dipping inside her as the head catches at her entrance, ‘ _so_ wonderfully.’

She feels it building, familiar and new, terrifying, this sensation inside her that she knows won’t crest until he’s _in_ her, and that word slips out, ‘Please.’

He stops. Stops and _laughs_ at her. 

‘Look at you,’ he says, as if it was supposed to be a sneer, and pulls his cock free of the wetness spooling out from her thigh. ‘Well done.’

He places her legs up, knees to chest, and lines himself up with her arse. 

‘No,’ she splutters, ‘no, no—’

And he’s in her, to the root, and she howls.

She’s expecting him to drive into her, over and over, until she’s screaming his name, begging him to stop so he can prove she doesn’t want him to. The sex that comes with a body count. The kind that needs something else to be at stake, so they can believe this has nothing to do with what they need. Not really.

This Master stays still inside her, his face caught between contempt and wonder as he watches her breaths slow, her pain ease. And then he moves.

Her wetness leaks down her, catching the base of his cock as he slides in, out. She can hear it. Obscene. Her own arousal, messy and undeniable. Every thrust rocks right against that gnawing, hollow need inside her, ramming against it and never filling it. So close—close enough she rocks back on him, harder, desperate to get him where she _needs_ him. She relaxes to let him in, he obliges, fucks her deeper, faster. It feels wrong from her throat to her guts, and she still needs more, anything to touch that place she knows will make her come.

‘Please,’ she whines, again, sensation shorting out her brain, new-old, this fragile, overwhelming intensity of pleasure, ‘please, please, please.’

He sobs as he comes. She knows the feeling of it, the stuttering thrusts of his hips, the gentle cold spreading inside her.

The Master reaches a loose, fumbling hand down to her clit. He kneads it in firm, rough circles as she clenches around his cock, the sensations all strung together, winding her tighter and sharper. It crests, right there on the edge of orgasm, and for a moment that singularity inside her winks out. Nothing. And then it’s detonating—impossible, bright and fierce as regeneration, wave after wave of pleasure seizing her from the inside-out, wringing her dry.

She can hardly catch her breath, as he pulls out and gets off of her. 

Like a volume knob, her thoughts gain out of the periphery. They all converge onto the Master. He’s looking down at himself, suit stained with their fluids, sweat thickening his hair and brightening his forehead. He looks at her, furious and lost, as if he’s asking whether she feels this rage, too.

The part of the Doctor that’s bereft, empty and leaking come and grieving in her self-enforced loneliness, wants to reach for him. To get what she’d wanted from this time, this place. 

But she knows better. She has to _choose_ better.

She gathers her clothes. ‘No matter what you do. How many people you kill, or planets you take over—’ her voice, hoarse, briefly cracks, ‘or how many times you _fuck_ me, you’ll never be the same again.’

Her shirt is a lost cause, so she pulls the fragments over her head and tosses them on the floor. ‘That’s a good thing,’ the Doctor adds. ‘That’s your chance to try something different. To start again.’

She buttons up her coat, combs her fingers through her hair. It’s an effort to walk normally, each step reverberating from her arse to her stomach. 

She takes one last, painful look at him. Sees all his faces, and the reflections of hers staring back from each of them. Her mistakes. ‘I suggest you take it.’


End file.
